Please help me finish my thesis so I can finally be free of academia 🫶✨ aidetectionsurvey.carrd.co

A mobula ray leaps clean over a hammerhead shark in the wild. Scientists still debate why rays jump, but the timing here is nearly impossible to replicate.

Join us in Vienna! We are looking for a PhD student and a Postdoc to investigate innovation in corvids within the “Comparative ecological innovation styles” project funded by @fwf-at.bsky.social. More info: barbaraklump.com Application deadline July 24th. Please share widely!

As you can probably tell from the headline, I couldn't stop thinking about the Lone Ranger while writing up this research from Chris Ellison's and Marc Hillmyer's labs for @cenmag.bsky.social. Hi-yo, PLA! Away! cen.acs.org/materials/po...

huh! who knew!! thanks for sharing these slides! very cool!

This is the worst timeline, gen AI strikes yet again!

We got to watch some awesome footage of slow motion spider jumps because Noelia Calderon and her talk "Scaling the Jump: Sexual Dimorphism in Jump Kinematics in Peacock spiders" #ASSAB2026

Reference for the data: Whole-mount immunofluorescence of a developing mouse embryo, stage E10 Mus musculus. Sample courtesy of Paul Maier, Embryology course, @mblscience.bsky.social (Marine Biological Laboratory)

Our brilliant student @nikkichin.bsky.social presented her work on Bembix moths and their crazy aerial predatory attacks at #assab2026 this week! So proud of her amazing work 😀

Excited to launch this today! If you know any Indigenous students in the Australasian region who are interested in Animal Behaviour, please encourage them (or nominate them) to join ASSAB for free 🐦 🐛 🐸 🐀 🪲 🐝 🐟 🦎 🐔

Please spread this talented and wonderful human’s name and work. Maartje @maartjevandenderen.bsky.social just finished her Scientific Illustration Master and is leaping into freelancing next. Got 💰 and #illustration needs? Look no further!! www.maartjevandenderen.nl

Who knew koalas sounded so bizarre!!!! #assab2026

Amazing talk on bat hearing this morning at #assab2026

Very excited to share our discovery of an engineering masterpiece from the Australian rainforest! In our latest paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social we report a hunting strategy in a spider, whose web outperforms every known biological catapult system.

Great talk on spider jumps by @pranavjoshi8.bsky.social #assab2026

Wonderful talk by Anuja Joseph called"Trap in Plain Sight: Obstacle Detection in Australian Stingless Bees" #assab2026

I am delighted to announce that the 2026 Australian Entomological Society Conference website is LIVE & registration is open. Abstract submission closes: July 31. event.mq.edu.au/aes2026/ Logo: Gunnar Tribelhorn @austentsoc.bsky.social @animbehav.bsky.social @ausevosoc.bsky.social

We have arrived in Adelaide for #ASSAB2026. We bring amazing stories of 🐝 🐜🕷️🪰, wasps and mantis shrimps. We also have brought a few hot off the press Tshirts of peacock spiders for anybody to purchase! Come find us!

Congrats @pipilika.bsky.social and @pranavjoshi8.bsky.social on a beautiful piece of work on the ballista spider out today!! www.cell.com/current-biol...

This is a deep-sea isopod. Dr. Johanna Weston, a deep-ocean biologist and guest investigator at @whoi.edu, is confident this is Bathyopsurus nybelini, one of her favorite animals. Learn why via the YouTube caption: youtube.com/shorts/DenUj...

Finally, footage from that new whale graveyard. The fact that fossils and fresh carcasses mix together in this spot is bonkers. But of course it makes sense, because the scavengers that live down there also need a steady supply over millions of years. They can't just suddenly adapt to the deep.

Checkout this super cute video featuring my collaborator @juanitarodriguez.bsky.social and learn all about spider wasps!!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxiX...

you simply can't beat Japanese floral stink researchers for scientific illustration

Here's a slower version with a compact crocodilian. Note that the limbs are tucked to the body & the leverage comes from the neck and tail working against each other. This is purely instinctual & baby gators can do this from birth. It gets less cute as they grow 😬

🕷️ Five new species of cave-dwelling spiders and one newly recorded forest floor species have been identified in Thailand. 🔬 Check out detailed descriptions and illustrations of these arachnids, following their discovery in subterranean and leaf-litter habitats: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1279.189587

The website for the 57th Australian Entomological Society Conference is now live!! The conference will be held in Sydney this year, go check it out :) #AusEnto26 #AustralianEntomology #entomology event.mq.edu.au/aes2026/

Do you work with 3D data like microCT or photogrammetry in entomology? Are you coming to the Australian Entomological Society Conference this year? Well then @idrnik.bsky.social and I have the place for you! Come talk at our symposium: event.mq.edu.au/aes2026/symp...

Sunbirds don’t drink nectar like hummingbirds. They use intralingual suction: the tongue acts like a straw, moving nectar via pressure differences rather than capillarity. A clear case of biomechanical divergence despite ecological convergence. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... @CurrentBiology #ornithology

Seems like a pretty important result; title says it all. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re off to Sydney for this year’s AES Conference! We are looking for symposium leads to help shape the program. Submit your proposals to [email protected] by April 30!

🚨ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED🚨 If you need more time to get your abstract together for the 2026 ASSAB conference, we have great news! The deadline for abstract submissions has been extended until the 27th of March! www.assab.org/assab-2026

The Australian Entomological Conference call for symposia is out!! Time to promote your niche insect interests by organising a symposium about it!!!

🚨ABSTRACT SUBMISSION REMINDER🚨 Submissions for the 2026 ASSAB conference are still open until the 13th of March. Submit now to take part in a friendly, warm and welcoming conference for behavioural ecologists

The cutest field assistant 😊

And here's a thought provoking study on other disparities in research, this one addressing different aspects of the gender gap. #WomenInSTEM journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Polyrhachis sokolova! This beautiful intertidal ant took 48hrs to print and was a heck of a challenge to clean-up! All those supports had to be carefully trimmed away from spindly legs and antennae but it came through cleanly! Printed in PLA on a Prusa MK4

Printed this beautifully behaved Ocrisiona jumping spider from a microCT scan. She kindly kept all her arms and legs inside the ride and didn't have any fragile spindly bits to work around unlike some ants that I could name... Printed in PLA, about 12hrs, Prusa MK4

Since AI slop is again all over Scientific Reports, a thread on the economics of grey-zone publishing. Why does slop keep getting published? What does it mean for science? How can we stop this? Background readings: Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy

"The CSIRO plans to cut another 350 research jobs, on top of the 800 jobs already lost in the past 18 months, on top of people in non-permanent roles whose contracts won’t be renewed." www.davidpocock.com.au/save_our_csiro

🚨Good news, everyone! 1) I'm thrilled to be joining the behavior powerhouse that is Indiana University!! So stoked, starting Jan 2026. 2) I'm recruiting grad students! Are you (or your trainee) interested in sensory ecology? behavior? evolution? fieldwork? spiders? Drop me a line Jstafstr(at)iu.edu

let me share a little story about a remarkable wasp that I encountered yesterday in our local deserts I stumbled across her, and scrambled to get a few crappy photos .... but then realized that she had a burrow, perhaps a better photo op was possible ?? here she is at her burrow entrance.

🚨 Methods paper out now! nhcm.pensoft.net 📄 How can we make #entomology more engaging? Printed insect #3Dmodels can help! 🖨️ 🐜 Here we provide a guide to producing insect replicas to help overcome common issues in entomological #outreach activities! 🧩 Check it out! doi.org/10.3897/nhcm...

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model. What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it? A 🧵 the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

The exteriors of spider eyes are part of the exoskeleton, so can't move. But in jumping spiders, the internal parts of the large central eyes have muscles that can swivel and twist to help the spider aim its eyes from inside the head. This is a 4-frame.gif showing that internal movement. 🌿🐙🕷️👀

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team! Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05... Open Access Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

So cool!

I couldn't help myself and also tried out printing tunosemi's Nothomyrmecia macrops model. This is a species near and dear to my heart after a very memorable field trip to work on these guys with @pipilika.bsky.social. Long drives, cemeteries, wild pigs, that trip had it all! #3Dprinting